dselect Documentation for Beginners
Chapter 1 Introduction

This file documents dselect for first-time users, and is intended to help in getting Debian installed successfully. It makes no attempt to explain everything, so when you first meet dselect, work through the help screens.

dselect is used to select which packages you wish to install (there are currently around 3650 packages in Debian 2.2). It will be run for you during the install and as it is a very powerful and somewhat complex thing which can be used for good or for evil; some knowledge of it beforehand is highly recommended. Careless use of dselect can severly mess up your system.

dselect will step you through the package installation process as follows:

• Choose the access method to use.
• Update list of available packages, if possible.
• Request which packages you want on your system.
• Install and upgrade wanted packages.
• Configure any packages that are unconfigured.
• Remove unwanted software.

As each step is completed successfully it will lead you on to the next. Go through them in order without skipping any steps.

Here and there in this document we talk of starting another shell. Linux has 6 console sessions or shells available at any one time. You switch betwen them by hitting Left Alt-F1 through Left Alt-F6, after which you log in on your new shell and go ahead. The console used by the install process is the first one, a.k.a., tty1, so hit Left Alt-F1 when you want to return to that process.